Go offline with the Player FM app!
178: “A Damn Big Dam”: Taming the Colorado River with the Hoover (or Boulder) Dam (Infrastructure pt. 1)
Manage episode 480669236 series 2438173
“I felt no distress whatever…I was perspiring freely and was as limber and helpless as a wet rag. It was an exhilarating experience.... It was then and there that I first conceived the idea of the reclamation of the desert.”
This is the story of the Hoover Dam.
A wild, precarious, and dangerous river, the Colorado tears across the American southwest’s otherwise arid and largely uninhabitable desert. Yet, if tamed, the Colorado could reclaim countless acres; it could provide sustenance and hydroelectricity for untold millions! But that’s the catch: “if.”
From a dehydrated mirage in 1849, to the outgrowth of an overwhelmed canal in the early twentieth-century Imperial Valley, this is the unlikely tale of the dreamers; government officials; a consortium of six construction companies, blandly called “Six Companies; Frank “Hurry Up Crow; and the 21,000 workers—over 100 of whom will wind up dead—who defied the odds and pushed engineering to new heights to “make the desert bloom.”
____
Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and
- go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations
- join discussions in our Facebook community
- get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette
- come see a live show
- get HTDS merch
- or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks.
HTDS is part of Audacy media network.
Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contact Audacyinc.com
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
223 episodes
Manage episode 480669236 series 2438173
“I felt no distress whatever…I was perspiring freely and was as limber and helpless as a wet rag. It was an exhilarating experience.... It was then and there that I first conceived the idea of the reclamation of the desert.”
This is the story of the Hoover Dam.
A wild, precarious, and dangerous river, the Colorado tears across the American southwest’s otherwise arid and largely uninhabitable desert. Yet, if tamed, the Colorado could reclaim countless acres; it could provide sustenance and hydroelectricity for untold millions! But that’s the catch: “if.”
From a dehydrated mirage in 1849, to the outgrowth of an overwhelmed canal in the early twentieth-century Imperial Valley, this is the unlikely tale of the dreamers; government officials; a consortium of six construction companies, blandly called “Six Companies; Frank “Hurry Up Crow; and the 21,000 workers—over 100 of whom will wind up dead—who defied the odds and pushed engineering to new heights to “make the desert bloom.”
____
Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and
- go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations
- join discussions in our Facebook community
- get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette
- come see a live show
- get HTDS merch
- or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks.
HTDS is part of Audacy media network.
Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contact Audacyinc.com
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
223 episodes
All episodes
×Welcome to Player FM!
Player FM is scanning the web for high-quality podcasts for you to enjoy right now. It's the best podcast app and works on Android, iPhone, and the web. Signup to sync subscriptions across devices.